 Yesterday's
Radio Ink featured an excellent and quite in-depth article
about where the broadcast industry now stands in terms of
streaming radio station signals on the Internet. The Copyright
Protection Act of 1995, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act
of 1998, the decision of the U.S. Copyright Office, and the
RIAA have all had a profound effect on the potential for Internet
streaming to be a profitable and worthwhile venture -- most
certainly in the near-term future.
We encourage you to read the piece for yourself. Many
will already be familiar with most of the facts, but the authors
do a great job of explaining why we're in the situation we're
in today. We'd like to highlight a few of those points. |
From the Radio Ink special report: "In 1998,
the law was updated and amended with The Digital Millennium Copyright
Act (DMCA). According to certain views, that act served notice
that all Webcasters would be responsible for the payment of licensing
fees to those who owned the copyrights of the 'sound recordings'
performed...what labels fear is that perfect, digital copies of
songs can be recorded via the Web; and they want those who provide
that digital entertainment to compensate for any potential loss
in sales..."
| Terrestrial broadcasters now wonder,
and are protesting, why they have to pay sound recording copyrights
fees -- which they've never had to before -- in addition to
the musical work copyright payments (ASCAP, etc.) simply because
they're streaming on the Internet. |
"Jonathan Potter (pictured), executive director
of the Digital Media Association (DiMA), a trade organization
that
represents Net-only casters and is striving to become the NAB
of digital media: 'It's unfortunate that the NAB did not recognize
that Radio stations were interested in streaming,' he says. 'The
NAB did not fight on behalf of Webcasting
because they didn't realize their members would be in the Webcasting
business. They were simply protecting their FCC license to franchise.
They fought against Webcasting
and failed to protect the interests of their Radio station members
who were in the streaming industry'...
"While the recording business was thinking far ahead
and lobbying congressional leader for passage of the DMCA, we
ignored the screams from those in-the-know and continued to struggle
with how to work our e-mail accounts. It takes knowledge of history
and RIAA objectives to fully understand where this law may take
terrestrial Radio...
"The perfect idea that materialized in Washington
was to keep the powerful record company lobby happy by finally
allowing them their desire to profit from the licensing of their
sound recording copyrights. That would be accomplished by tacking
fees onto the streaming of sound recordings. Traditional broadcasters
would be soothed by the knowledge that their over-the-air fees
wouldn't increase, and groups like ASCAP and BMI wouldn't have
to share any pieces of their pie.
"Those bearing the brunt of the cost would be the
new Internet companies, who had not yet taken the time to build
relationships in Congress and yielded very little political power.
It seemed to be a perfect solution until terrestrial broadcasters
began to get more aggressive with their streaming efforts."
| You may know that your streaming copyright payment
obligation is retroactive to October 28th, 1998, and that
a bill is coming for the music you've streamed since then
up until this point. But we have no idea of the amount, and
that scares a lot of people. |
"What will the bill be on a retroactive basis? 'No
matter what the fee is, in order to have it apply retroactively,
you would've had to keep data (number of online listeners, 
streams
served, etc.) from 1998, yet no one has said Radio stations are
obligated to keep data like this,' says Bennett Lincoff (pictured),
senior counsel for the New York law firm of Darby & Darby, and
the former director of legal affairs for ASCAP. 'How can you reconstruct
a retroactive fee? If they apply a flat fee, I bet it will be
modest. The nature of not having the information available and
coming up with something fair will have a tendency to make that
retroactive payment less.'
"Today, the sound recording fee that is charged to
DMX and Music Choice is 6.5 percent of gross revenues. That's
where the ugliness could come in. What terrestrial broadcaster
is going to pay such a fee for a segment of their business that's
doing
nothing at present but draining
the bottom line?
"While the fee potentially could be sky-high, you'd
have to think that the RIAA would go easy on the new medium that
is about to be their latest golden goose...'We certainly do not
want to doom the Webcasting models and are only interested in
receiving a fair marketplace rate for the use of the sound recordings,'
says the RIAA's Steve Marks (pictured), senior VP of Business
and Legal Affairs."
| Now the question for terrestrial broadcasters is:
should we bother streaming at all? |
"Bob Raleigh, director of Country and Oldies Programming
for Cumulus/Atlanta: '[Until] it can be proven that streaming
a station's audio over the Web translates into local market ratings
and revenue, there is no value in paying
a rights fee,' he says...
"Jaye Albright, president of Country Services for
consultant McVay Media: 'Perhaps what this is really about is
an attempt by the RIAA to stop the flow of music to the Internet
until they have a better plan for monetizing it themselves.'"
Read the Radio Ink Special Report: "The Death of Streaming"
here.
BY PAUL MALONEY
"Because we're all thinking about it..." rationalizes
one of the produced sweepers for
Nerve.com's
two
streaming
radio stations. "It" of course is NOT your company's plummeting
stock price -- but what we all thought about when we had time: SEX.
Remember that? The Internet's favorite three-letter word, after
"MP3," "IPO," "B2B," "P2P,"
"ROI," and "DOA." If you happen to be looking
for S-E-X on the N-E-T (I understand some folks do from time to
time), Nerve.com is the site and
Nerve
Radio is the soundtrack.
In case you're not familiar with the site, there's nothing
to be afraid of. It's the companion piece to a publication you can
buy in places that aren't open 24 hours. That being the case, there's
nothing here that will bring the authorities crashing through your
door, and your Visa card will still respect you in the morning.
In fact, the essays, fiction, interviews, poetry, reviews, and (gasp!)
photography are all pretty much too "cerebral" and artistic
for the general Internet "perv" to care about. So that
leaves the rest of you...uh, us.
The two streams are called "For the Mind," and
"For the Body." Both variable bit-rate (that is, the server
determines your bandwidth and connects you to the appropriate stream)
Real Audio streams are accessible from the radio page. And both
call up Nerve's customized player window, from which the user can
connect to the other stream, and access not just the homepage, but
other parts of the site.
Formatically, "For the Mind" leans towards an "adult-alternative"
rock format (Radiohead, PJ Harvey), and "For the Body"
serves up a more primal, dance-oriented sound (Suicide Underground,
Groove Armada w/Fat Boy Slim, Massive Attack). The stations do in
fact cross over somewhat --
as
we imagine they have a similar target audience ("extremely
well educated, affluent, mostly in their 20s and 30s" according
to the Demographics page under About Us). The music is largely unfamiliar,
but an excellent mix. Maybe we're victims of sexy subliminal messages
compelling us to keep listening -- or maybe it's just really good
music. A little digging revealed that the programming mind behind
Nerve Radio is Paul Bendat of (surprise, surprise) another of our
online favorites,
WABY.com.
Unfortunately, there are no "Now Playing" or "Buy
This Disc" features on the player. There are DJs who occasionally
identify the music -- but on the Internet that's just not good enough.
We wanna know now!
Nerve and Nerve Radio do an excellent job of moving the audience
back and forth between the two. In other words,
Nerve
Radio features can be found all over the site. And just as importantly,
recorded promos and "teases" in between songs on the stream
encourage listeners to spend more time
on the site. For instance, listen to the stream and in
between songs you might hear a pleasant voice (like actresses Ione
Skye and Parker Posey) reading a few sentences from a new piece
of fiction posted on the site, or Nerve's spoken-word CD. After
a few more songs, you might hear a line or two from one of the more
interesting personal ads in the "Nerve Center." It's certainly
worth noting how the different features of the site, in this case
the radio streams, build and maintain the synergy which keeps visitors
and compels them to return.
And if that doesn't bring you back, there's always the sex!
 |
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From Newsbytes: "...as a new report from Jupiter
Research indicates, off-line radio companies may be on the
cusp
of steamrolling their online-only counterparts by besting Web radio
at its own game.
"Aram Sinnreich, a Jupiter Research analyst, details
those views in a new vision report, 'Online Music Radio.' In the
36-page report, Sinnreich predicts that currently dominant online,
Web-only radio stations will begin to wane in influence, as off-line
stations gain access to technology that makes it easier and cheaper
to make their way on the Internet.
"'As delivery technologies improve and music subscription
services gain traction,' the report says, 'consumers
will begin to demand the same
personality-driven,
localized content from online radio as they do from off-line
radio...'
For now, online-only radio stations have several important
cards up their sleeves - especially personalized niche programming
- that keep them in the driver's seat. But the real trump cards
belong to off-line stations, Sinnreich writes, because they offer
what listeners truly want the most.
"'Personality, not personalization, will prevail in the online
radio space ultimately,' the report says. 'Terrestrial broadcasters
must leverage their trump cards -
local
station brands and on-air talent - to regain market share
that they have lost to online-only players.'"
Read this article
here.
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